Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting is rich and flavor-packed spice cake. It is made of grated carrots-nuts (walnuts or pecans) and usually paired with sweet cream cheese frosting. The pretty orange flecks of grated carrot give the Carrot Cake color and soft dense texture.

We loved our cake more the next day! So if are planning to bake the previous day, don’t worry! They don’t dry out instead the flavors soak in well. Also you can bake this cake in cupcake forms.

Instead of grating the carrots, I used a food processor with pulse option, so the texture of carrots isn’t over-processed and close to grating. Go ahead and grate the carrots if you don’t have a processor or you can also use grated carrot that is available in all supermarkets. Stir in carrots and chopped nuts. I used pecans for this recipe, if you can’t find or have pecans, substitute with Walnuts.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and grease and evenly sprinkle little flour on the pan and tap of the excess flour. Pour the batter into prepared pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes.

To Make Frosting:

In a medium bowl, combine butter (at room temperature) and softened cream cheese. Stir in confectioner’s/powdered sugar (I used 1 and 1/2 cup of confectioner’s/powdered sugar which was perfectly balanced sweetness but the original recipe mentions 4 cups, too much sweet for us. So adjust to taste)

Optional ingredients for the frosting: 1 tsp vanilla and more chopped pecans – I omitted the vanilla as well pecans because the frosting turns to a pale brown and there was already loads of nuts in the cake. Beat until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

Turn out the cake on a wire rack and cool completely before icing/frosting the cake. Once cooled, I trimmed the top of cake a bit with a serrated knife to make sure that the surface was as even as possible. Now generously frost the cooled cake.

Cream cheese frosting is rich and cream and pairs perfectly with the cake, so don’t skip frosting!